Meta

Tag: motel renovation

Tricia Bowden and her friend, Philly** brought our vision to life with this awesome Whistle Up The Bay inspired design and color palette. Our challenge was to scale it up to a 4′ x 8′ sign with zero budget or sign making experience.

**Phil Detloff is his real name, and he’s a real graphic artist. We are thrilled with the designs he created for us and highly recommend him. LOVE it!

Lexi, Dave, & Shane did a bit of strategizing and practicing with the old sign. Lexi is saying, “Let’s use a grid system,” and Dave is saying, “I can free-hand that s**t.”Father and daughter snapping chalk lines.Mmmm…. pretty blue paint.

Our beautiful daughter and sign painter.Meanwhile, Dave cut down the cross beam, but kept the side posts and existing sign frame.Pretty as a picture.Our neighbor, Chuck, donated a ballast to get the whole No Vacancy sign working properly.Lexi painted happy little trees.The first layer of paint took a few days to dry.Therese painstakingly and meticulously traced and spaced my homemade paper letter stencils and Dave painted them in.Therese came back yesterday to help me paint walls in three rooms, and then helped Dave put the sign in the frame while I stood around taking pictures.

Finished with this part for the day. Passersby were honking and giving Dave the “Thumbs Up.”Dave had band practice, so I spent part of the evening making the lamp post stencil. I traced the outline from the logo with Photoshop Elements, saved it as an eps file, then enlarged and printed it as a banner in Publisher. Perhaps not the most elegant way to have done it, but it worked.Dave applied the paper stencil to the sign this morning.Traced around the stencil with pencil.Then he filled it in with white paint.He’s a lefty.He has a good eye and a steady hand.

The Motel Possible project moved forward by leaps and bounds in July, due in no small part to a big assist from friends and family.

It’s hard to believe we are cleaning and sorting linens, hanging pictures and coat racks and curtains, and making beds in preparation for actual opening. We are working hard and still having so much fun!

As always, thanks to everyone who has helped and supported us emotionally, physically, and financially. It means everything to us.
Patty & Dave

We held our first work bee. In spite of a rain delay, it was a tremendous success. So many great friends and family joined in the work and hopefully had a little fun, too.

The grounds crew was amazing.

Dominic has been heading up our groundskeeping efforts. The whole family pitched in to help.

Brad and Uncle Jeff dug up and raked out the second courtyard, or Reflection Zone, as we have taken to calling it.

Dylan whipped the weeds and grass into shape.

Jason did some lumberjacking. Hate to take out trees, but some were just too close to the building.

Dave power washed the courtyard. Mike and Therese prepped rooms in Building Two for paint.

Shane painted his way down the east side of Building One.

Sarah caulked the trim boards.

It made for a long day, but he made it to the corner.

Cheryl and Dominic cleaned out rocks and years of debris.

Dylan trimmed up low hanging branches to clear the driveways.

Sarah helped clean up the future picnic area. I didn’t get a picture, but Victoria and Annemarie cleaned all the courtyard bathrooms!

We enjoyed music and a gorgeous starry night beside the newly built fire pit.

The morning after.

The results.

This area is looking much better. The cedars up close to the building are probably going next.

The drive up to Building Two is now passable without hitting branches.

The picnic area is ready for rebuild.

Dave couldn’t help but hum the Sanford & Son theme song as we cleaned up.

We took a moment on Sunday to relax and enjoy the newly cleaned courtyard.

We decided to keep the arborvitae in the courtyard for now, but not the ones on the building ends.

Our friend Chris brought his backhoe up and removed them and pulled out more autumn olive while he was here. Next we’ll move around to trimming and painting this end.

We’re letting the milkweed go at least until the mulch arrives.

We rebuilt the landscape walls on the south end of Building One.

And removed the giant pile of lava rock. We’re liking the crisp and tidier look.